Bill O'Reilly at War

AP TV reporter David Bauder says that "if Bill O'Reilly truly loves a good fight, then he's had quite a week."

The Fox News Channel personality's confrontation with David Letterman Tuesday night made for some gripping television. The cranky "Late Show" host told his guest: "I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap."

That same night, nemesis Keith Olbermann on MSNBC once again named O'Reilly his "Worst Person in the World," this time for battling with two people at The New York Times. That's the 15th time O'Reilly has been cited since Olbermann began his half-facetious, half-serious nightly "award" to wag his finger at bad behavior.

Olbermann frequently attacks O'Reilly.

Olbermann regularly tweaks his time slot competitor, particularly since starting the "Worst Person in the World" segment last June.

"He's writing this material for me," Olbermann said. "I'm thinking of sending him a check. Day after day he just gets weirder and weirder and weirder."

Olbermann said he's thinking of holding fire a bit lest it seem like an obsession. While he's not a watchdog in a serious sense, Olbermann said that "it's important to me that you provide an alternate perspective to whatever the elite is in a given field.

"I look at them — they're clearly the popular clique, led by the bullies in the school — so if you get an opportunity to point out what stupid thing has been said or what moronic action has been encouraged by them or simply when they have fallen all over themselves in relation to the facts, you should do it," he said....

He may already be, at least at Fox News Channel's office. O'Reilly, who didn't want to talk for this article, has referred to Olbermann — although not by name — as a "notorious smear merchant" and pointed out his low ratings. (Olbermann's typical audience is about one-sixth of O'Reilly's.)

One Fox spokesman says NBC Universal head Jeff Zucker should "think twice about tying his future, not to mention the reputation of General Electric, to an unstable ratings-killer like Keith, who uses an NBC property for his personal attacks."

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